'Woman entering into relationship with people into Facebook, lodging rape cases': Karnataka HC quashes FIRs against man

The Karnataka High Court has quashed two criminal cases of rape and cheating against a man after noting that both the cases were registered on complaints of a woman, who sought relationships with people on social media platforms and later registered offences against them on breach of promise of marriage.

A single judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna said, "If trial, in the cases at hand, is permitted to continue, it would be putting a premium on the activities of the complainant and her effort to abuse the process of law over and over."

The court allowed a petition filed by one Girinath under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code against the two separate FIRs lodged against him by Rajeshwari in Bengaluru and Davangere on the same set of charges.

The court also noted that the complainant had entered into a similar consensual relationship with another person in 2013 and later lodged a criminal case, which ultimately ended in his acquittal in 2016 after she herself turned hostile.

After going through arguments, the bench said, what would unmistakably emerge is that the complainant after having a consensual relationship with the petitioner has sought to register repeated crimes on the very same set of facts with the same allegations one at Bengaluru and another at Davengere.

"This case becomes a classic illustration of an abuse of the process of law. What is required to be further taken note of is the submission of the counsel for the petitioner, that the complainant is in the habit of registering crimes against several people," it said.

The court also pointed out that the complainant herself admitted having consensual sex with the petitioner.

"It is not one, two, three, four or five, but six years of consensual physical/sexual relationship between the petitioner and the complainant after having met through social media platform. The complaint narrates in minute details as to what has transpired between the two, for all the six years. The allegation that is made later is, from 27-12-2019 intimacy between the two waned away or faded away. Fading away of intimacy cannot mean that it would become ingredients of Section 375 (rape) of the IPC," the bench said.

The counsel for the petitioner contended that he has been maliciously prosecuted not in one forum but before two separate jurisdictions for the same facts which is an abuse of the process of law, all for a consensual live-in relationship for six years.

He also claimed that the complainant is in the habit of luring people on social media and indulging in physical relationship with them. He would quote an illustration of a 2014 case registered against one Dhanush with whom the complainant had physical relationship and had tortured him, took money and settled the issue.